Thermal Performance Study on a Sensible Cool Thermal Energy Storage System for Building Air-Conditioning Applications

Abstract

In most developed and developing nations, nearly 40% of the energy generated is utilized in the building sector, in which nearly 50% of the energy is consumed by building cooling/heating systems. However, the energy requirement for building cooling/heating varies continuously with respect to time. Hence, in hot countries, if the cooling system is integrated with a storage system, the cooling system need not be designed for the peak load requirement. Further, this kind of storage system is very useful and economically beneficial in the scenario of dynamic electricity tariff, being introduced in many countries in the emerging renewable energy scenario to solve the grid stability issues. Further, it is very useful to promote microgrid with distributed renewable power generation. Considering the above, the major objective of the present research is to demonstrate the integration of the air-conditioning system with a sensible heat storage unit for residential applications. An experimental setup is constructed, and experiments were conducted to evaluate the heat exchange behavior during the charging and discharging process by varying the inlet temperature and the mass flow rate of the heat exchange fluid through the circuit. It is observed that the set temperature of the cool storage tank is to be maintained above +5°C to achieve better efficiency during the charging process. During the discharging process, the room could be maintained at the required comfort condition for a duration of 285 min with 29 cycles of operations between the set point temperature limits of 25°C to 28°C. When the inlet brine temperature of the cooling unit reached 20°C, in the next cycle, bringing down the room temperature again to 25°C could not be achieved. The results shown in this work are beneficial for efficiently operating the cooling system and useful in promoting renewable energy in the near future in the building sector. Also, the low-temperature sensible heat storage system is capable of maintaining the storage temperature at approximately +4°C, instead of -4°C normally employed in the case of latent heat-based storage system that allows higher performance in the sensible heat storage system.